"To Dream a New World: ""race"", Reality and Surreality in Cesaire, Carpentier and Harris"

This investigation of Cesaire, Carpentier, and Harris and their influences in the Caribbean establishes a framework for the examination of the specific influences of the surrealist movement on Negritude and magical realism and of the ways that other Caribbean writers have responded to and echoed the contentions of these movements. Focusing on Aime Cesaire, Alejo Carpentier, and Wilson Harris, this study presents, first, a history of Surrealism and its involvement with non-European writers and then an analysis of each of the three Caribbean writers' relation to and transformation of surrealist principles. Compromised by the very circumstances of colonialism, Cesaire's Negritude and its poetic expression structure the "Black" in opposition to the European "norm." Alejo Carpentier's hybrid solution, too, is an ambivalent rejection of Europe. Structuring its imaginative reality after the multiple histories and peoples of America, lo real-maravilloso americano extends Cesaire's definitions beyond the bounds of opposition and exclusion and asserts the immanent marvel of America. Wilson Harris subverts both Cesaire's oppositional construction of identity and Carpentier's valorization of American experience. Informed by a fundamental commitment to the diversity of history, tradition, and experience, Harris's syncretic vision points toward the future of the post-colonial condition of the Caribbean.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Comparative and World Literature

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

1992

Author dc:creator

• Scott, Daniel Marcellus, III

Contributors dc:contributor

• Palencia-Roth, Michael

• Literature, Comparative
• Literature, Latin American
• Black Studies
• Literature, Caribbean

Identifier

(UMI)AAI9305688

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/72573